Depression

Changes and Triggers

/ Robin

By now I know that major changes in my life can trigger an episode. This is true for everyone who suffers from Bipolar Disorder. Last September I went to Florida to see my daughter for ten days. We spent nearly every day at one of the amusement parks. That plus the flights there and back were major stressors for me. Then just a few days after I got back, I started back to school at the University of Washington at Tacoma. That was another even bigger stressor. I admit, I didn’t do great dealing with the overload and eventually had to start on a chill pill so I could get back to where I could function.

Now I’m taking spring quarter off from school (another stressor) and am looking for a small house to buy closer to town (yet another stressor). I’m hoping that my son will move out when I move (stressor) so that I can just get it all over with at one time.

I’ve been reading one the books on my “Books” page called “The Bipolar Survival Guide” and it reminded me that these types of stressors can lead to episodes. I’ve not only got one stressor, but since my dad passed last year in January it’s been nonstop stress.

How am I doing? I’m listening to my dog and playing more and taking her to the park to walk her with my son, his girlfriend and her dog. I’m sleeping enough. I’m eating okay. I’m trying to eat better. I’m taking my meds on schedule. I’m not doing my usual occasional night of skipping my meds for a night just because I can, because that’s a stupid and risky thing to do. I have some wine in the refrigerator that I will be getting rid of. No more alcohol. I have enough stressors and triggers tapping on my “overload’ button without me purposefully adding more.

How am I doing right now? I want some of that Hersey chocolate frozen pie stuff, that’s how I’m doing.

I really wish I had some!

So now begins the time when I have enough time to realize how stressed I am and actually act stressed. I’m not looking forward to having free time. How’s that for weird?

Why I’ve Gone Back to College at 53

/ Robin / 5 Comments

This last fall (September 2015) I started classes full time at the University of Washington Tacoma taking a full load. This is something of a miracle because I live with Bipolar 1, PTSD, ADHD, and a healthy dose of anxiety. Lots of anxiety. You might think going back to school, and being around all those people, and having to get up when I’m depressed, and write papers when I’m depressed, stressed, manic and full of anxiety is a pretty fool-hearted thing to do. It may be. It certainly hasn’t been easy. I admit it probably triggered the episode I’m riding out right now. But still, here I am. I made Dean’s List (I got good grades) last quarter.

I’m here because I have been being a no one. I’ve had nothing to do and not a thing to contribute to society. I’m here because my brain needed a jumpstart. And, I’m here to learn to do the things I need to know in order to reach some of my goals.

How’ve I been doing? I’ve had melt downs. I skipped classes once last quarter. I’ve freaked out over writing papers (It was about 30 years ago that I wrote my last paper.) Every week brings new challenges and triumphs. Yes, I’ve had some triumphs along with my bumps and bruises. I’ve been terrified a lot. Even the drive to and from and parking make me anxious. I leave an hour and a half before class so I’m never late and always have a place to park. (It’s how I cope.)

I’ve gone into this with my eyes open and done all I can do to prepare. I’ve registered with the Disability Services office because I’m legally disabled and I need to be able to tap their help when I need it (like having longer to take a test) and I do. Near the end of last quarter I had a meltdown that sent me to my doctor who put me on a chill pill. It was like magic. I could calm down and think. I was able to finish the quarter actually have finished writing the papers and remembered to turn them in. (This was the chill Pill I mentioned a few days ago.)

What am I getting out of this? As I’ve said I needed a jolt to my brain. I’ve always fancied myself a communicator and I’d lost my ability to do that. I had even stopped my sloppy blogging.

I took a huge risk. I’m still taking that risk and it is paying off. I’m being challenged to think in ways I haven’t thought in years. I feel smarter though in all probability it’s just the cobwebs coming lose. I’m also driving some of my classmates nutty by asking them questions that any Freshman should know. But I’m a transfer student and I’ve forgotten all that Freshman stuff. Plus, now we use technology and not paper and pencil. I’ve had a lot to learn even with the basics like how to turn in an assignment online. Not everyone is patient and willing to answer these kinds of questions.

If you’ve been thinking of challenging yourself and reaching outside of your comfort zone I encourage you to try it. You can always go home and refuse to leave again. Or, maybe you’ll like the way that it makes you feel.

Bipolar Parent – Clash of the Titans

/ Robin

I am Bipolar Type 1.
I have ADHD.
I am a parent of seemingly “normal” kids.
I am the daughter of a Titan, an undiagnosed Bipolar Type 1.

I say “Type 1” because to me this is the most dangerous. We act out in more dangerous ways. We are harder to control and stay within societies boundaries.

One of my most constant and worst places to be is in the land of RAGE.

My Rage has been under control for a good amount of time. I’m taking my meds. I just took my meds. I’m feeling what seems to be the old familiar rage.

This Bipolar daughter was part of her bipolar father (73 and has brain cancer) being belligerent and violent towards my mother tonight. All it took was for him to finally act on his growing agitation by refusing his meds and then pushing my mom over and making her phone fly out of her hand. Later he pushed me into the walker. I don’t care about me, but no one lays a hand on my mom.

I’m so glad my son came with me tonight. Somehow I just knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with him tonight. The situation escalated so quickly that I had to get the neighbors to come over to help us.

I’ll tell you this, no matter how much medication you take, when your brain is swelling and it is changing someone there is not much to do but try to prepare for… for what?

He pushed my mom over. As the evening has progressed tonight and Kyle and I are finally home. My son has finally gone to bed I paused to take my many pills I was feeling a familiar beast that had returned without my being aware of it earlier and now is making itself know… I’m enraged. Is that different than feeling the rage of Bipolar? I wouldn’t know. They happen in the same brain. I think, I suspect they start the same.

My father with Dementia was physical tonight. Somewhere I love him. We’ve fought terribly and with rage with one another most of my life (at least that was my response to him).

When does anger become rage for me? When it becomes the beast behind my eyes blinding my good judgement. When it raises from deep within my mind and kicks all those years of horror right back. When I want to hurt this demented man who has hurt my mother and may hurt her physically again. I want to him stop.

My will are like steal. I raised three kids on my own. I know what it is like to have to be on alert all the time. But this is a full grown man who can hurt someone. And, he is my father. That changes the game completely.

I’m angry no one listened to me when I voiced my opinion on “dad” proofing the house. Granted it was a cell phone that flew, but he has a lot of stuff he could use to hurt my mom with.

Hell no.

I really need my brother to be on the same page with me. I seem to be there when dad is acting the worst. Of course I also am with him when he is doing well. But this week for my time with him has mostly be challenging to say the least.

My ears heart. I want to hurt him back.

It’s time to stop and regroup. Time to check in with my support people and make sure these are normal emotions and not my “illness”. If my meds need to be adjusted so I behave then so be it. I’ll do what it takes.

But I have to control the growing rage and morph it into compassion if I can. I have to be loving when I go back.

Me (the younger Titan) and my father (the elder Titan) locked wills tonight through no fault of our own and neither backed down. He didn’t get passed me to my mom. Eventually he took his meds from my son while the neighbors sat nearby. I hope he sleeps well.

The other day my mom woke up to find his rifle on the bed next to them.

Seeds for anger… seeds for rage… now it’s my job to use what I’ve learned over the 51 years I’ve been around to see if I can pull back to normal anger levels… to cope.

I believe I can.

Good night my friend

Please recommend my blog to others and consider following it yourself. I’d love to hear from you too. Have you experienced backwards Bipolar parenting too?

Bipolar and Chronic Pain Just Plain Suck

/ Robin

Monday my Bipolar brain took a chance an had a lumbar steroid shot to attempt to relieve massive pain I’ve been experiencing for years. I respond quickly to medications and other treatments and it’s been this way with the lumbar shot. By the next morning I was experiencing muscle cramps and painful spasms. Although I wanted, in my strange way, to think something had gone wrong I decided that these things were happening because my body was moving more freely because there was less pain. Even a slightly longer reach or stretching a muscle beyond what it has been doing for the last 25 years.

The second night my back lit up. All the nerves in my lower back were on fire again. I got an ice pack and sat in my recliner (which my mother thoughtfully gifted to me) and tried to ride out the storm. No such luck. Kyle was staying up late playing a game on the X-box and for the first time he saw a little of the hell my body puts me through. I thought I could get it to calm down with the ice. No such luck. I was reclining in the chair to better freeze the painful area. I couldn’t stand it any longer and I started kicking my legs and groan with the pain.

My anxiety level was reaching critical mass and I felt I was losing control. My mind was unable to restrain or reign in my response to the pain. It was excruciating. I asked Kyle to rinse out the tub for me (Bailey, the puppy, loves to play in the tub when she’s not having a bath.). Not knowing what else to do he did so quickly. I climbed in before the water got more than a few inches deep. I sat with my back to the spigot and the water turned hot. I was so tired I kept falling asleep.

I don’t know why I didn’t use the heating pad. That’s what it’s for really. That and the big ice packs. I think when the pain becomes so great that we can no longer think clearly. Also being Bipolar I’m not always prepared for nor able to deal with such pain. I was so drowsy. I walked close to the wall so I wouldn’t fall down the stairs. Finally I realized I’d not taken anything for my back all evening because I was feeling better. I jumped the gun.

I keep a record of when and what and how much of each drug I take during the say so I don’t over or underdose. I was way under.

Today I asked Kyle if he’d ever seen me like that, in that much pain. He hadn’t. I told him how this was only some of the pain I have been in. If it had been any worse I wouldn’t have reclined my chair because I knew I would break it. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I know he is starting to understand.

This, this is Kyle in the first grade. Today he is a sophomore at UWT (University of Washington at Tacoma)
kyle1st-grade

I’ve tried to hide my infirmities from my kids as they’ve grown up. The fits of anger and depression, the aggression and the manias… I couldn’t hide them all the time. Maybe never. I’m not sure. Today all three are remarkable individuals.

Raising them I was in constant physical and mental pain. I nearly lost myself. Today, for the first time in…. forever I put away the groceries anfter shopping and wasn’t in any pain. No pain in my physical body at all.

I had no idea how much pain I’d been in… until after some of it was gone.

It is my hope, that now that some of the chronic pain is alleviated my work to balance my mind will be more successful.

My friend, I have learned many lessons from this experience with ongoing pain. I didn’t know I was blinded by the pain. I didn’t know the pain made my mind, my Bipolar mind, more messy. If you experience other pain in your body that can be addressed, pain so great it alters your daily activities including you need to be doing with your kids. Myself… I couldn’t even stand long enough to cook. When coaching softball my pain was like a monster. I’m sure I wasn’t very effective. I cared a lot about those kids though. I just thought the pain was part of carting around sports equipment. I was wrong.

Consider your body… has it got a hold on your mind? On your Bipolar behavior?

Be well my friend.

Bipolar – Fractured

/ Robin

I don’t like to talk about the spin, the time when I free fall and cannot make myself stop. When anger and grief and pain explode in my life… not just my brain. What I think, this is what and who I am.

For the moment. Sometimes these moments can draw on for the proverbial eternity and we try to think, if we could, that we’re coming near the end, that we cannot stand this anymore.

I didn’t have more than brief moments of these things. Most of the time I have been so manic that I thought my brain would implode from shear spinning. You see my friend, I’m a mixed Bipolar 1. Those of you who aren’t familiar with this condition, congratulations. Today you win the lottery. This last few weeks have been terrible. I have been very depressed and unable to see it or deal with it. When it was suggested that this might be where my massive irritation was coming from I had a difficult time admitting that it probably was. (See how I did that? I still skirted around it.)

I have exploded, with my kids present, too many times. Recently, too many times. Okay, not exactly always at them. Sometimes just when they’re around. When I’ve considered my past I worry for the times they’ve been exposed to my insanity. Being a single mom and going ballistic for what seems now like for no reason at all leaves a mark on kids. They say it’s worse than divorce. I’m both. Bipolar and divorced. I worry for they scars they carry… because of me.

I’m a mixed state depressed and yet manic Bipolar 1. I have two kids still at home. I am alone. I have no friend to speak of accept one and we met on line and don’t speak of these things. I’m glad for that. I can be normal with her. She knows I’m Bipolar and she doesn’t care. I act rationally if a little meanderingly with her. And yet, I fear I’ll say something and she’ll walk away too. So many have that I’ve quit trying to find friends.

My family doesn’t (beyond my kids) understand. Not at all. When they care to try to… they… well they don’t. Recently I learned that when my mother took home stuff to read about Bipolar she never read them. She’s never looked it up on line. She’s now 72. She has no excuse. She knows how to use Google.

Yet we all know that even the great Google cannot explain this that we are. We are ourselves. We are great in mental volume, if not in order. We excel in emotion, if not in control.

I spent a lot of time this last few weeks in grief, anger, fear, irritation and depression. I suppose, don’t understand why I avoid that. I think it seems to my fractured mind that admitting depression means loosing the last bastion of my mind. Confusing, I know. New meds sedate me too the point where I simply cannot not sleep. This frightens me as well. You see, as my med provider put it, “We need to get your nerves calmed down.” Now, when I’m not so calm as to sleep, I’m not calm. There must be a middle ground. I must give my mind time to heal. Be patient.

My kids suffer I think. They are afraid they may have inherited my genes too much. But you know, after all of me, all of living with me, they still believe in themselves. They have ego. EGO. All three believe in themselves.

See you thought I’d never finish the “pride” letter didn’t you? Ha! They have pride in themselves that is good. It isn’t forced. It’s part of who they are. Part of their hardwiring. I asked them how they each manage to be so sure of themselves. This is what they said, each one said this:

“Mom, you taught us to believe in ourselves. You drilled it into us. You, you did this.” I did. I made them who they are. (Give this wording to me for now. I deserve it.)

I have my own ego. Ego born of an accurate estimation of ones abilities is a good thing. I’ve struggled with this thinking I’m really stupid because I never finish anything. But I have. I’ve successfully raised three amazing kids (young adults). I know what I’m good at and they are many things. I finish things when my brain lets me. One thing.

I’ve raised three amazing kids. I’ve been a wreck this week. But, I started on Lyrica for some of my physical pain. I should be scheduled soon for a shot in my spine and that should alleviate a lot of my other physical pain. My additional meds should mitigate some of my mental pain. Even though I’m up in the middle of the night again, I feel restless, but hopeful. For the moment. These moments will grow longer, this much I know from experience. I must stay the course and take all my meds every single bloody day.

I have one thing to say to you and I hope you will listen.

I’ve raised great kids. Awesome kids. I love them beyond words. I… have raised awesome kids despite myself.

My friends write to me and comment on my letter. I wish to read your thoughts. You too are important to me. Till the nest time, be well and be patient with yourself. Give yourself a chance to heal.

(Oh, and there are now 23 pot shops. (Oy veh)